blog.noodlemaps.net

I installed Gentoo as a little project last weekend, on my Dell Inspiron 1525. It took a fair old chunk of the weekend, and was a great deal of fun. I'm really happy with it so far.

Following through the Gentoo Handbook is great -- it's basically a hands-on tutorial to learn how various parts of Linux work. I wrote my very own /etc/fstab; I compiled a kernel for the first time; I battled with X for a bit; I did all kinds of things. It's a massive learning experience.

Despite using Linux since about 2001 I've never compiled the kernel before. I've never needed to -- I guess I was lucky enough to begin using in a time when for everyday use a quick Google and a bit of userland tweaking could fix most things. And nowadays in most distros you get a kernel with a kitchen sink compiled in, so I'm never really likely to need to compile a kernel for everyday use. I don't need to, but I want to, however, just for the sheer nerdy fun of it.

Going through menuconfig made me realise how much totally unnecessary stuff is compiled into a generic stock kernel. It was fun to recompile and get rid of all that cruft. In terms of performance/resources I don't think the bloat particularly matters; as far as I understand there's no real harm in having it all there as modules, and it's obviously useful to put it all in to cover all bases for a generic distro. But it's nice to get rid of junk!

I used genkernel first, based on the .config used for the CD image, to just get something that works. And it did to some extent. But X didn't work. So I tried to recompile the whole shebang myself and include all the i915 drivers. But then I got a kernel panic right at the start of boot. So I tried recompiling based on the .config for the kernel bundled on my Debian partition, where my crappy Intel graphics work just fine. But I still got kernel panics at boot. Eventually I clocked that you can use genkernel --menuconfig, getting all the nice working stuff from genkernel but tweaking to your own tastes. So I opted for my i915 bits as modules and away we went!

I really like portage and emerge. Compiling from source obviously does take much longer than just downloading a binary, but it's fun (if you like that sort of thing.) I must guiltily admit to having kind of liked watching compilation output fly through the terminal since I first started with Linux. But back then you had to hand resolve any dependencies, and for that Dante would have reserved a whole separate layer of hell if he'd had a computer. With emerge you get to see gcc in action, but all your dependencies are resolved for you! Heaven!

I will concede, though, that it can be a pain to wait for a program to compile when you just want it quickly. But I figure the wait-time will go down over time, simply by virtue of more and more libraries and whatnot having already been compiled and ready for use on my system.

As far as I've read, compiling to your chip's specific architecture, as Gentoo does, doesn't actually necessarily make amazing speed boosts. But who cares, it's fun. And I have to say Firefox was absolutely blisteringly fast when I installed it, but that could well just be because it's a fresh install without years of accumulated cruft in .mozilla.

I hear on the grapevine that USE flags are the best thing about portage/emerge, though I've not yet used the system long enough to know just why that is.

So overall I'm very happy with my lovely new Gentoo, chiefly because of all the stuff I've learnt in the process of using it. And I'm only about 5 days in, so here's to learning more.

I watched another excellent BBC science program yesterday. Part of the Horizon series, it is called 'The Secret You'. The aim of the programme is to investigate what consciousness is. A bit of a hefty topic, but excellently dealt with by the perpetually wide-eyed Marcus Du Sautoy, who subjects himself to a number of experiments on his brain all in the name of science. Marcus wants to know what it is to be self-aware; what is 'I'?

In pursuit of answers, he gets his brain twiddled with by a succession of men with beards. There's some really fascinating experiments. First we see the mirror test, a method for determining when babies (and animals) become self-aware. It's fascinating to think when it is that we go from just seeing something in the mirror, to knowing that that something is us.

Next up we see the tennis test. It's used as a way to determine whether someone in a persistent vegetative state still has some cogs whirring in the noggin -- whether they, as in their awareness of themselves, is still there. You ask them to imagine they are playing tennis and then look for activity in the part of the brain that would deal with that.

Marcus gives it a go, getting further and further anaesthetised until he can no longer imagine playing tennis. (Perhaps similar experiments were performed upon Tim Henman.) I guess the tennis test encapsulates the idea that the point at which you no longer have any conscious brain function is the true point at which you are no longer 'you', even if your body is still breathing and your heart still pumping. I guess it shows how much stock we put in the mind as the defining element of being alive.

Another experiment is seeing what happens in your brain when you're awake, and what happens when you're asleep. A part of the brain is stimulated; when awake, that stimulation triggers off a whole chain of activity rippling around the brain. Whilst asleep the activity just stays local to the area of stimulation. The idea is that it is that network effect of activity whizzing all around your brain that gives us some of our feeling of being ourselves. We don't get that feeling when we're asleep, I guess.

A very cool experiment shows how easy it is to to persuade Marcus's mind that it is located somewhere other than where his body is. It's remarkably simple to do so -- just give him visual input from somewhere else, play a few other tricks, and he's convinced. Based on this then it's interesting to speculate as to whether the mind could exist without the body. As long as you stick the right input into a brain, could you be given a form of self-awareness even though no human 'body' is there?

The last experiment freaks Marcus out. By simply observing the activity in Marcus's brain, experimenters are able to say what he's going to do before he has done it. 6 seconds before he does it! Well I'm not sure they can do so in real-time, but after the fact they can say that Marcus's brain was plotting something 6 seconds before he was consciously aware that he was going to do it. Marcus understandably feels weird about that, as if he has no real control over what he's doing. But as the experimenter points out, it's kind of a dualist way of thinking -- that Marcus's mind is separate from what's physically going on in his brain. It's not. The activity in his brain, that is Marcus's mind in action.

At one point Marcus holds a human brain in his hands. It's extremely weird to think that once upon a time that brain contained an 'I'. Someone's mind used to knock around somewhere in there. It's kind of weirder once the scientist pulls out a big knife and chops it in half. But I guess it doesn't matter after the mind has gone.

At the end, Marcus comes out with a great line. As he fills in a donor release form -- "my brain has decided to donate itself to science."

I watched the first two episodes of BBC4's Electric Dreams over the past few days. It was a really fascinating look at how technology has advanced over the past 40 years, and how it has changed us in the process.

The programme follows a family from Reading, who are sent warping back through time to relive life as it might have been in the 1970s, 80s and 90s (how it might have been for a fairly well-to-do middle England family, that is.) The focus is on technology and how it has shaped our lives over the years.

The first thoughts brought to my mind from the 70s episode was how much of a pain in the arse things were to do back then. The mother of the family, Georgie, spends the majority of her time in the kitchen struggling with crappy washing machines and useless cooking equipment. The father, Adam, drives around in a car with no wing mirrors. The kids have to do their homework not only without computers, but without even calculators (until good old Clive Sinclair comes along mid 70s).

The most interesting part though is how much more time the family seems to spend together, even if it is only to chip in with fairly menial tasks. The kids have nothing to do in their bedrooms so they go and play outside. Despite my love of computers and technology, and despite that I'm sure if I stop and think about it I'd argue that there's nothing wrong with spending time alone on a computer, it all looks a lot more wholesome back when there was bugger all to do and you had to make your own fun.

That idea follows through to the 80s, when the advent of some early computing and early games also heralds in the days of the kids sitting totally silent in their rooms staring at a screen. But at the same time life gets easier as various time-saving appliances appear.

The shows really highlight how technology has the capacity to totally change society, both for better and for worse.

I didn't get to see the 90s episode as it's vanished off iPlayer, but if it mirrors my own experience of the decade it will involve at least 4 years sitting in front of Goldeneye N64.

Plus Are 'Friends' Electric? is one of the best songs ever.

This was most amusing to my inner 14-year old:

Got some nice new desktop bling with enlightenment and the awesome fireball theme.